Achievement

The goal of Debra Cox, an INCBN IGERT Trainee and a Ph.D. graduate student in Physics, is to insert lipid-coated microbubbles containing drug mimic into a tissue phantom, apply clinical ultrasound, and detect any changes in bubble diffusion. It has been reported that microbubbles undergoing dissolution have, for an unknown reason, a stable minimum size of 2 um. In order to achieve the stated goal, a better understanding of microbubble dissolution is needed. Ms. Cox has therefore constructed a setup to measure bubble size after a single ultrasound pulse. She found that for bubbles coated with a saturated lipid (DSPC), bubbles smaller than 8 um do have a stable minimum size, while those larger than 10 um do not respond at all to ultrasound. This has not been seen before. She also found that for the same ultrasound pressures, microbubbles coated with an unsaturated lipid (DOPC) disappear entirely. These findings are important for the ultimate goal of using microbubbles in drug delivery.